Li Bai is the most beloved poet of the Chinese tradition, possibly of world literature. Spontaneous, dazzlingly imagistic, drunken with moonlight and friendship and the road, his poems of wine, exile, and mountains feel simultaneously intimate and cosmic. "Quiet Night Thoughts," four lines about moonlight and homesickness, has been memorized by Chinese schoolchildren for 1,300 years.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.